In order to clean furnishings in places such as a private residence, hotel, or hospital, the covering articles are removed from the furnishings and are typically washed in a washing machine. This may be an effective manner in cleaning the covering articles, however, this does not effectively clean the underlying furnishings that those articles cover such a bed or pillow. The underlying furnishings are susceptible to bacteria, virus, mold, fungi, dust mites, fleas, lice, bed bugs, dead human skin, and other unwanted and potentially unsafe toxins, organisms, and human by-products.
The underlying furnishings are difficult to clean for several reasons. One such reason is that the underlying furnishings are not easily portable to transport to a washing machine. The underlying furnishings may be bulky or heavy. Additionally, the unwanted and potentially unsafe toxins, organisms, and human by-products that may be found in underlying furnishings are not always effectively cleaned by traditional cleaning methods known in the art. For example, the bedding articles such as sheets or covers can be simply cleaned by soaking in a soap detergent solution. However, the underlying articles cannot be easily cleaned in this manner because they are difficult to dry due to increased mass, water retention, and surface area. The underlying articles could be vacuumed; however, this is a manual process and does not sanitize many of the microorganisms, toxins, and human by-products.
Devices incorporating ultraviolet light or steam have been developed to clean underlying furnishings. These devices are generally hand-held devices that must be manually scanned over the underlying furnishing. These devices suffer from a variety of disadvantages including that they are hand operated, are small in size and thus take substantial time to use, may expose the operator to ultraviolet light, don't effectively clean some microorganisms, toxins, and human by-products, and don't collect any of the dead matter or debris.
Accordingly, a need exists for a manner to clean underlying furnishings that addresses the various disadvantages associated with the prior art.